From Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.written

On Sun, 22 Mar 2026 19:14:32 -0400, William Hyde
<wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:

That was the rule, everyone went. One uncle, no more than 5 feet three >inches tall, 120 pounds at most and very, very English, was seconded to
the Irish Guards - they needed a radio operator/technician.

My maternal grandfather tried to join up for WW2 but the navy wouldn't
have him as he was a commercial fisherman who had lost 3 fingers in a
fishing accident 5 years previously. (He still continued to play the
saxophone as he had figured out a non-standard fingering technique
that allowed him to keep playing) He was keen to serve as his father
had been a ship commander for the Royal Navy in WW1.

He ended up on contract to the British Ministry of Food as he had
developed a refrigeration process that made it possible for the first
time to ship Pacific Salmon to Europe (and of course have it arrive in
edible condition). This turned out to be a VERY important step for him
as postwar he built a refrigeration plant on the docks which got him
into the canning business. And made contacts with companies who
post-war were customers of his.

(And retired just before the Canadian federal government by their
control of fisheries licencing made it next to impossible to be a west
coast commercial fisherman unless you were Native - which wiped out
2/3 of the canneries on the Canadian west coast.)

There's a reason I'm named for him while my son is named for his
father.
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